


fuel the pyre of your enemies

by dqgilly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marauders, any hozier song is about jily if you aren't a coward, badass lily, i wrote this in an hour and it's really JUST because james is hozier that's all i'm here to say, it's cute and not very explicit, james is hozier, kind of, makeout, they kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 03:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18241847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dqgilly/pseuds/dqgilly
Summary: James spends a lot of time staring at Lily; neither of them mind.





	fuel the pyre of your enemies

He loved to stare at her.

It was entirely creepy, probably. To anybody who noticed—which was _everybody,_ of course, because James was many things, but never subtle. Remus and Sirius would take the mickey for hours if he didn’t turn it around on them, tease them about their own lovestruck expressions.

Even if he had no way of stopping the jokes, though, James knew he would’ve kept it up. It was the kind of matter he didn’t mind losing a few battles on.

A few times early on he tried to place it. What it was about her, he wondered at eleven, fourteen, that he couldn’t look away from?

Later on he amended his own question: he _could_ look away, and he was perfectly capable of doing so at any time; James just never thought it was worth it. Weighed his options and came out with the same answer every time.

“Staring,” Lily said under her breath, her cheeks still ruddy.

Something about her was violent, he thought. _Everything_ about her was violent. When he touched her hair he half expected to come away with scorched fingers. When she gasped—whether it be in outrage, surprise, or laughter—he felt himself suffocate, just for an instant. When he looked into her eyes, he worried he might get lost in the forest of them, left alone in a world vast and full of hungry things.

He was lost in the violence of her among everything else. The parts of her that made him want to fall to his knees; the parts of her that made him feel more vulnerable than any man in his right mind should ever want to be. If James _could_ live in those woods, lose himself in the things deep inside of her, the things with teeth—he would in a heartbeat—his last one, even, if that was what it cost.

“Was I?” He asked in a low tone, trying to be his own thing with teeth as his head dipped down to her neck. She sighed and he wondered how he was meant to breathe.

“You never really stop,” she answered in a breathy laugh. He pulled back to look at her again, fire blazing and forests burning, and he still couldn’t quite remember how to pull air into his lungs. There was no telling if Lily would erupt, if James would beat her to it.

“Merlin, how could I?” 

Lily grinned—another sharp thing of hers to get lost in—and pulled his head towards hers, where their noses touched and his glasses began to fog.

How, how, how was he meant to breathe?

“I didn’t tell you to.”

Her lips were on his, then, again, and James thought this was better than whatever breathing promised him, anyways.


End file.
